The Chase.

Phone call to make. Email to return. Text to write. Vacation to plan. Food to prepare. Dress to buy. Weekday dinner. Game night. Worship venue. Coffee date. Football score. Road trip. Book Club. Dance party. Family outing. Tuesday study. World news. Facebook invite. Cute guy. Church women. Breakfast fare.

Running. Chasing.

Torn piece to piece, in pieces. Life scattered. Segmented. Pulled. Lured. Drawn.

We're like threads on a net, the end caught to unravel, slipping away at grasp, maintaining no hold because of its lucrative power to seduce and secure so many directions.

I dial cell phone. I scan Facebook. I scour email. I propose text. I schedule plans.

All to which purpose, to which end?

These things, hoping and aiming to connect me to so many, instead pull me away. Because the directions all yank so severely that I am everywhere and no where, with everyone and no one, all at the same time. I chase.

I run the race, tangle in the vines.

Caught by good things, great parties, glad conversations. Nonethless, still caught.

He has called me to run this race for Him. To keep His heart, my focus. His pleadings, my will. His dictation, my life. His hope, my freedom.

"Throw off everything that hinders" Hebrews 12:1 states, petitioning me to take note and grapple.

Perhaps, what hinders, are good things. Good relationships, good events, good plans. But so much good causes little fulfillment in distraction.

I chase toward Him, yet divert my eyes and awareness as billboards like post-it notes line my path: text back, align time, check calendar, make room, purchase item. My eyes, my schedule, my thoughts distract my heart.

So perhaps there is a place where the chase becomes a pursual of so much good, it returns bad. And then the chase isn't really a chase at all, it's a repetitious swerve, jumping this way and that to end no where at all.

A few months ago, I started a new mantra: "Say no to good things." Because I found myself overbooked and unaware and empty of God as I tried to seek Him and others through so many avenues. So I had to learn, to reteach, to say no. To block time and place and space to simply be. That being, then, instead becomes the greater Chase. The chase towards Him.

I am reminded.

As I take such delight in creating home, loving every little detail that softens the place, creating warmth and welcome... As each photo comes out with images I love to capture, am gifted to share...

I am reminded.

I am reminded of the women around the world who gather children, hungry to be fed. Who scrounge through layers of worn clothing for something to offer their babies. Who nurse their young to flattened breast, who stir rice in pots hot over fire, who dine with dirt fingers and dish.

I stood in my living room with a friend, overlooking my piles of boxes. Embarrassed. Trying to find words to say. About these piles of rooms filled with, and obsessed with... Me. Shame hung like a curtain over my brow and I crawled inside, revealing only the corner of my thoughts to him. Possessions stacked like haphazard trophies, askew in the room.

I mull over lines from Hope In the Dark, photography of Africa.

Decisions I must make on any given day:

- Blue shirt or pink cardigan?

- Tall soy chai latte or Grande carmel macchiato?

- Text Message of call?

- Eat out or frozen dinner?

- Reality television or headline news?

Decisions SHE must make on any given day:

- Blue dress or blue dress?

- River water or puddle water?

- Walk once for four hours to get water or walk twice for eight hours to get more water?

- Sleep with the fisherman who will give food in return or let orphaned grand children go to bed hungry?

- Persist through the struggle or give up?

- Curse God or praise Him?

The words melt into me like comfort and conviction. I lay my box aside and rest, pulling through the language of Ronald Sider in Rich Christians In An Age of Hunger and use his wisdom to balance my thoughts and intentions. About Biblical joy in celebration and generosity and giving. About jubilee and wedding banquets of old. About Deuteronomy 14: 23, 26 and I Timothy 4:4 and Ecclesiastes 3:13.

In a consumer society that increasingly measures a person's worth and importance by the amount of his or her material possessions, biblical Christians will reject materialism without falling into asceticism. They will delight in the splendor of the material world but not forget that things cannot ultimately satisfy. They will enjoy the good earth and celebrate its abundance without neglecting sacrificial sharing with the needy. They will distinguish between necessities and luxuries. They will enjoy possessions while recognizing their seductive danger. When forced to choose between Jesus and possessions, they will gladly forsake the ring for the Beloved (pg 105).

Perhaps, then, the concept of possessions is based more on intent than shame or greed or self-denial.

I leaned in my classroom one day as Mary Cnossin demonstrated Mary Kay to my eighth grade girls and announced that her makeup is her witness. That it allows her to thread and weave with women who culturally are accustomed to playing this part. The words left lingering trails through my perception of witness. My friend reminded me of it, standing there in the doorway of the green room, over-barren by the wall of boxes. That this is my culture. That that these boxes of dishes and blankets and books are my witness. They are the tools to which I invite people in, to which I offer my heart and my love, my openness and my offering, my welcome.

So as I slide one more photograph into frame, sand down a whitewashed window, or dig the trowel in the dirt, I relax and am reminded. That women around the world use their patted dirt or dining room table to welcome. That whether it is their single blue dress, or my red one, we all are called to witness. And that in this world, may I be a witness to both and with both, the women around the world and the women in my home.

Of this today, I am reminded.

Making Home: My Favorite Things.

Substitutes.

When your dad isn't present, and you don't have a mom, you find substitutes. You find others to fill that small sense of presence or meaning, or give thoughts or insights.

In creating a home, you find friends to climb on ladders to hang cathedral ceiling fans and screw on light switch covers. You call your brother to give you thoughts on mortgages and insurance. You ask the ladies at home depot about growing flowers, and have your friends mom come over to help you map it out. You talk to the teacher next door about cabinet problems and paint and payments. You borrow paint cans from a friend. You ask your painter about colors and textures and creating a home. You ask your friend to do a walk-through. You ask the men at Lowes about handles and hinges.

To those who stand in the gap, who walk in my wounds, I thank you. I thank you Amy, Jay the Painter, Lindsay, J.D., Jenna, Tawnee Bounds, Melissa and her mom, and the women at Home Depot Garden Center. Most importantly, I thank you brother, Blake. Because in this process, he has been invaluable. He has talked me through mortgages, prices, realtors, down paymnts, home owners insurance, and even escorted the process of my piano.

To all, I am indebted.

Learning Home.

I garden at 6am most mornings, and am known by name and face at both Lowes and Home Depot. I buy hinges, knobs, hydrangas, and hostas. I gather rugs and carpets, paintings and photos. Holding and hanging, arranging and wondering. I draw ideas, test arrangements, paint colors. I return most bought, finding learning the process...

The learning is a delight, a process of... home. A place to come in and linger and stay and be warmed. Being. A place with grilled rosemary chicken and sautéed peppers and crusty bread for dipping. For white wine on hot days, sangria on sunny afternoons, and a cabernet in the evening. For coffee in the morning and fresh muffins baking....

I'm going to make one wall in my kitchen of 11x14 picture frames. To remind me of life and joy and people. Because its those faces, the ones that will fill the frames, that will remind me of the fellowship of life, and bring that sparkle and glimmer and memories to that table space. So I'll see their love while I'm aproned over sun-dried tomatoes and Southern sweet tea.

And my main room, its soft and cozy, comfy and cottage. With blue hues of aqua and whites blurred with sands, layers of green with flickers of yellow. Beach grass and shells, glass bottles and mountain island candles, and my Gun Lake carving nested below. A lantern rests and pottery waits. Home.

My green room is my favorite. My piano room. Yet to come, Wednesday. To be filled with flower baskets too, on a worn window from a friend. Shelves of books, the passages of life. And somewhere yet to find, a big stuffed cushioned chair for reading and tea and Bibles and words...

I can't wait to let you linger... and I'm learning in the process... home.

Neighbors.

For the first time in my life, I have neighbors. They mingle, they walk their dogs, they sit on their front porches. We talk about gardening, about small things, over shovels, over coffee, over crying children.

For the first time in my life, I have neighbors. And we chime in like a little community. About who's renting, who's teaching, who's powerwashing, who's painting shutters. About who's dog is lost, who's child is growing, and who's in charge of repairing fence.

For the first time in my life, I have neighbors. I walk the sidewalk pathway, looking for them, learning from them. Commenting on their hydrangeas, asking about their hyacinths, borrowing their lilies. They show me their dogs, their bikes, their cars.

For the first time in my life, I have neighbors. And I love it. I like it. I bury it deep within me, like an endeared term, concept, and notable pleasantry. I'm a neighbor. I have neighbors. I am known.

The Painting I Give.

My friend Kate says that when your words stop, when you brain empties of no thoughts, when your fingers stay still, write.

Write whatever comes to mind. Write about the weather. Write about the birds. Write about the water. Write. Just write.

And somehow, like a leased damn the words will unravel and flow.

So here I am, like the sprocket on the side of my house, willing to be turned anew. Fresh with water, wrinkling with hoses, spurting and sputtering at first, pushing out bubbles of kept air and trying to gain a flow again, a rhytmn again. Of water released. Of writing released.

I've spent days just passing through, just getting by. Just staying afloat.

This morning, I finally felt. Not much, but a twinge to let me out of the work of 'housing' and into what will be the haven it creates. Right now, I'm Wever-One-Track-Mind of getting it done, getting it done right, and getting it done now.

But this morning, on my way to school, I sent my sister a one line text:

I wish mom were here to help me plant flowers.

She wrote back and our conversation texted included this line:

She would make it beautiful and bring love and love doing it.

And, with those words and thoughts, for the first time since I bought the house back in April, a deeper connection smothered me, a tear pleaded in my eye, and I felt.

Everyone asks how excited I am, how it is going, etc. etc. I offer little in return. Because right now, in my head and my heart, it's a project.

But soon, a haven. A rest. A place. A feel.

Words will begin to take shape, to define it. To define the place and space: the laughter and stories, the memories at the table, the meals created, the wine lingered, the celebrations cheered, the fires warmed, the books read, the prayers given, the flowers grown, the coffee drank, the bread baked, the music played.

Words will be the painting I give. The essence I bring. Words that begin with... writing. Just writing...